Slavery
The personages of The Inner Life were slaves, slave-owners, and abolitionists. Bell or Belinda was the last person to be recognized as a slave by a British court and Joseph Knight's court case ended the law of slavery in Britain. Gideon married the daughter of a prominent Liverpool slave trader and Alexander bought over 175 slaves to work on his Grenada plantation. Some of the personalities, like John, were both slave owners and opponents of slavery. It is striking that the most connected individuals (who appear the largest on the graph) were all slave-owners. In this map, slave-owners are marked in red, slaves themselves in green, and opponents of slavery in purple. All others are blue.
